At a Glance

The Army Corps of Engineers is keeping water levels lower than they typically do.Lower levels means the Corps may not have to discharge water with algae blooms during rainy weather.President Donald Trump is visiting the lake on Friday.

Lake Okeechobee most likely will experience more blue-green algae blooms this summer, but steps being taken now may keep them from creating a disaster across South Florida like last year, an officer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is expected to visit the lake on Friday to discuss a project to refurbish the aging Herbert Hoover Dike that prevents the lake's waters from inundating communities to the south.

The Army Corps manages the dike and water levels in the lake. When water was released because of high levels last summer,into the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers and canals across South Florida. Bright green frothy gunk choked the rivers, fouled beaches and killed fish and marine mammals.

"The algae is part of the result of having high lake levels year after year and part of the result of having turbidity in the lake and turbidity in the rivers from storm events, having significant amounts of runoff from your basin and the lakes, all of those things have caused significant harm, and we know that," Lt. Col. Jennifer Reynolds told a gathering Tuesday in Cape Coral, Florida.

(MORE: Blue-Green Algae, Red Tide on Florida’s Gulf Coast Make Residents Fear for Their Communities)

Reynolds, second in command at Army Corps' Jacksonville office, said the Corps is allowing water levels in Lake Okeechobee to , according to the News-Press.

A satellite image shows a huge blue-green algae bloom on Lake Okeechobee in Florida on July 2, 2016. The bloom is flowing toward the St. Lucie Canal, on the right side of the image.

(NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey)

Lower levels means the lake can hold more water when the rainy season starts, Reynolds said.

"We fully anticipate having algae on the lake this year. We get algae on the lake a lot of years," she said. "And the higher the nutrient level and the higher the turbidity in the lake, the more likely an algae bloom is. So the more storage that we have at the beginning of the wet season the less likely it is that we have to release any water when we have an algae bloom on the lake."

Blue-green algae blooms tend to happen in warm weather when heavy rains wash nutrients — such as nitrogen and phosphorus that often come from fertilizers — into the lake. The algae, also known as cyanobacteria, spill into rivers, canals and estuaries south of the lake when the Corps discharges large amounts of water , according to the University of Florida.

Some cyanobacteria produce toxins that . Some toxins affect the nervous system and can cause respiratory distress and eye irritation. Others can cause skin irritation.

(WATCH: Toxic Algae Blooms Causing Brain Disease in Dolphins?)

The toxins can kill fish if they are ingested, and they also can cause oxygen levels in the water to drop to deadly levels.

Last year's blue-green algae blooms coincided with Florida's worst red tide in decades. The red tide lingered off most of the state's southwest Gulf Coast until earlier this year.

The two incidents led to calls for more effort and money to be put into preventing runoff and restoring the Everglades, which Lake Okeechobee flows into.

President Trump's budget proposal includes $63 million in federal funds for Everglades restoration. Florida's lawmakers have asked for $200 million. Congress ultimately makes the decision on how much to spend.

Gov Ron DeSantis in January unveiled plans to and get a handle on the algae blooms.